The Runaways
by Mika Minx
Summary: What do you do when you just want to get away from it all, from college and from those around you who are nothing like those you knew before? Do you just ignore these wants and go on with your life the way it is now? Or how about run away with your best friend?
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

When he felt the phone buzz next to his pillow Odd didn't even have to look at the screen to know it was her.

"Hello?" he asked the phone groggily, not even sure if he should have answered.

"I can't take this anymore. I'm so done."

Odd sat up hastily on his bed, now wide awake and eyes wide. He knew that tone of voice. The same one he'd responded to just three years before when he talked her off her roof. He hadn't heard that voice in a while, not from his best friend. "Where are you?"

"Odd…" There was a pause. A hint of regret in her voice this time. She didn't answer his question.

"Where. Are. You?"

She sighed, dragging out the breath as if she was blowing into the phone. It wasn't until Odd was out of bed and had a sweatshirt pulled over his head that he heard her speak again.

"Odd, it's late. What time is it anyway? I'm sorry I bothered you. I'll call you back at a more… at a better hour."

"You wouldn't have called me if it wasn't important. Just tell me where you are or I'll go to every place I think you might be until I find you."

"…I'm at the old house."

"The what?"

"The Hermitage."

"I'll be there in ten minutes."

**a.n**

**Yes, I know it's incredibly short for now. But just know that this is a little something that I'm going to add a bunch to later.**


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One

"Let's go."

Aelita had made a point of not sitting to close to the door, because she didn't want the moonlight outside hitting her disheveled state. She didn't want to be the first thing he saw when he opened the door without ringing the doorbell, which he always did. It took him a minute to spot her, legs curled up against her chest as the dim light skirted through her short hair.

"I said let's go," he said, his voice softer this time. He picked up her duffle bag, crumpled by the door.

"I… I didn't even tell you where I wanted to go…" Her voice wasn't anymore than a whisper. They both wondered the last time she'd had anything to drink.

"Does it matter?" He followed the statement with a wry smile and a step inside. The house wasn't welcoming, he could tell, and he couldn't even see past the couch she was sitting on, blocking the entry to the front hallway. There wasn't much to the front room, either, apart from her. Probably some mildew hidden in the corners and splintered wood under the carpet, but they both knew the house hadn't been touched in years. Even when they were kids the house was falling apart; God knows what state it was now. The way he saw it, the faster they get out the better because who knows how long the frame would even stay standing.

"I shouldn't have called you." She didn't move.

"Well, you did," he said and laughed a little, pulling a cigarette out of his pocket. "And I'm going to stay here until I'm confident that I should."

She rested her nose on her knees to hide her small smile, watching the end of his cigarette glow brighter than the moon outside.

"How long have you been here anyway?" he asked from his position sitting in the doorway, blowing tobacco clouds into the darkness.

"I don't know… left school this morning and came here. However much time is in-between then and now."

He sighed through his nose, the smoke making him look like a dragon briefly. "Please tell me I don't have to drive you all the way back to Nice."

"No, not specifically." She drew circles with her pointer finger on the dirty couch. "I don't really want to go back. Not to anything familiar."

"So you're just going to let that scholarship go to waste? Weren't you going to change the world with some neurochemical miracle or something?" He stomped the cigarette butt into the thin carpet.

"I don't know… I'm not sure of anything anymore, you know? Not after everything that's happened." She was sitting cross-legged now; her eyes tired and bottom lip bloody from her bad habit of biting it.

"Yeah, yeah, I get you," he smiled and stood up, using the door frame half as support for his exhausted figure, and half so he could keep this "cool college dropout" look going, even if just to make her laugh. And he would make her laugh. "So are we going?"

She smiled. "Going where?"

"Nowhere in particular."

**A/N: I know I know you all hate me because it's super short and ends on a cliffhanger and I haven't updated in like 4 months I GET IT. But yeah, once this story gets going soooo much more will be revealed so. Stay tuned and comment comment comment so I'll have incentive to write more, faster!**


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